Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992

The fourteen essays that make up Doctorow's book range in concept from discussionsof the lifes of authors which were the stuff of myths to the lives of politicians who were trying to create myths in their own names, from Thoreau's WALDEN to Orwell's 1984. These and the others all fit into a theme that Doctorow calls "presumptive nationalism."The essay that I find most interesting is entitled "Commencement," and is,in fact, the Commencement Address that Doctorow delivered to the Brandeis University graduating class of 1989. A theme in the address is taken from Sherwood Anderson and Doctorow refers to it as "the theory of grotesques." It goes something like this: The world is filled with many truths to live by, and they are all beautiful. Two that he first mentions are the truth of thrift and the truth of self reliance. There is a problem, however, when one of these truths is grabbed up and made into a cause to the exclusion of all other truths.Take thrift for instance: It is a good thing to be thrifty, and work hard, and scrimp and save in order to get a college education. You've done well. But if, later in life, long after it's necessary, you continue to deny yourself and those close to you, until the act of hoarding becomes an end unto itself, your thrift has become a lie. You've become a miser. You've become a grotesque.Or take the truth of self-reliance: Doctorow states that it is undeniably beautiful. Self-reliance was the truth that underlay the whole Reagan Administration. In the name of rugged individualism and self-reliance, the truths of community and moral responsibility towards those with lesser advantages were forgotten. In the name of self-reliance, school lunch programs were halted, legal services for the poor, psychologocal counseling for Viet Nam veterans and Social Security payments for the handicapped, among many social programs, were taken away. The philosophy that this engendered has caused hundreds of thousands to suffer. Doctorow believes that much of the homeless problem that we see on the streets of our cities, and the rapid increase of drug sales, among other ills, can be directly traced to the advocacy of the truth of self reliance to the exclusion of other truths. This has certainly become a political philosophy of the grotesque.In a way, concentrating on just one aspect of one essay does this book a real disservice, but there is just so much food for the brain here that I felt I had no other option. To get even an inkling of the connections between poets and presidents, between literature and lyrics, and between aspects of 19th and 20th century American life as Doctorow means for us to do, the book must be read in its entirety. That's exactly what I recommend.